Something in Common
by dear-marauder
Summary: Simon comes to Magnus for help and they realize they have something in common. Set fifty or sixty years after the original series. Oneshot.


_One day it'll just be Simon and Magnus left from the trilogy... that's just too cruel to think about. ~Chocolateshots_

A/N: So I read the above quote in a review for nikkiRA's "All There Is" and it demanded I write something about it. This is my first _Mortal Instruments_ fanfic, so let me know if I got the characters sounding right.

I don't own _The Mortal Instruments_, or any characters therein. Blah, blah, blah.

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Something in Common

The two men sat across from each other at the kitchen table, one drinking a steaming mug of tea and the other only pretending to.

"How do you do it?"

Magnus set down his drink and frowned. "Do what?"

"Live like this, every day."

"It's a little thing called breathing, though I can see that over the years you might have forgotten what that's all about."

Simon's lips twitched, but he didn't actually smile. "You know that's not what I meant. How do you live every day, never aging, leaving everyone else behind? How do you live with _that?_" He gestured toward the living room where a younger – and yet so much older – man sat in a recliner. His hair was more gray now than black; his skin sagged, stretching the scars etched into it from years of being Marked; and he slept with his mouth slightly open, a bit of saliva running down the side of his face. Simon could barely stand to look at Alec, to realize what time had done to him, and to everyone else Simon had known.

Rather than answering, Magnus asked, "How long since you've visited her?"

Simon didn't have to ask who Magnus was talking about. "Twenty years," he whispered. "Their kids had kids of their own, and those kids were my age."

Magnus leaned back in his chair. "Lovely grandchildren. They call me Uncle and ask me to color their hair. I don't think Jace quite approves, but Shadowhunters are much more liberal now than when he was young. They haven't taken Alec away from me, after all.

"She misses you."

Simon jolted; he hadn't been prepared for the shift in conversation. "Clary?"

"Yes. She was very disappointed you couldn't make it to Isabelle's funeral."

Simon's shoulders slumped. "I'd already been to Maia's, and then Jocelyn's and Luke's. I just couldn't go to another. Isabelle was the most alive of us all. To see them put her in the ground like that…" He shuddered.

"Does it bring back bad memories?"

Simon shook his head. "I don't remember my own burial. I just can't… So much is different now." He absentmindedly brushed his fingers across the Mark of Cain, making Magnus wonder if he even realized he'd done it. "I can't stay in one place, even if I want to. But the thing is, I _don't_ want to. I'm so restless, and half the time, when I come back, I don't realize how long I've been away. I think that's part of the curse."

"And, along with your dismal fashion sense, one of the many things about you I don't envy."

Simon smirked. "I think I'd have to look like a My Little Pony before you'd envy my fashion sense."

"Don't knock the Ponies; they're delightful little creatures."

They sat in silence while Magnus drained his mug and Simon restlessly turned his in circles on the tabletop. Magnus took Simon's mug from him before it could scar the wood and began to drink the tea Simon hadn't touched. It was tepid now, and he cupped his hands around the mug, willing warmth back into it.

"Why did you really come here?"

"I want you to help me. I want you to erase my memories."

Magnus cocked his head to one side as he studied Simon. "Why should I do that?"

"I'll pay you."

Magnus laughed. "Believe me, Daylighter, the last thing I need is money. I was hoping for something a little more interesting."

"I won't pay you the way Alec did, if that's what you're asking."

Instantly, Magnus's amused expression shut down, and he gave Simon a stare that would have frightened anyone else – anyone who hadn't spent the last half-century proving to himself, and the rest of the world, that nothing could physically harm him. "I don't like what you're implying. I never used Alec."

"I'm sorry; that was uncalled for."

Magnus merely shrugged. "What you ask for is difficult. And it won't solve your problems."

"It worked for Clary."

"Jocelyn had to bring Clary to me every two years to update the memory blocks, and when they eventually broke down, Clary was traumatized."

Simon leaned forward. "Are you saying that you can't do it? Or won't?"

"Neither. I'm merely advising against it." His second mug was empty now, so he stood and carried both of them to the sink. He rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher more for something to do than because he needed to. He could scour them with magic if he really wanted to, but why bother using it for such mundane tasks?

He closed the dishwasher and turned back to Simon. "You're young," he said, and Simon snorted. "I know it doesn't feel like it now. You're, what, seventy-five?"

"Give or take."

"Believe me, Simon, looking at that from the far side of a thousand, you're very young indeed."

Simon frowned. "You're not even nine-hundred yet. Alec said you were eight-hundred when you got together."

Magnus waved Simon's words away. "The point is, you're young. Still very much a child in the eyes of most Immortals. I don't think you know what you're asking for, and it wouldn't be fair of me to grant it. You haven't reached the age of consent, if you will."

Simon erupted out of his chair, and for a moment, Magnus thought he was going to attack him. Instead, he glared at Magnus, then his shoulders slumped and he was suddenly the most defeated man Magnus had ever seen. For while Simon was still a child in immortal years, he was a man in human ones, and while it had been centuries (exactly how many, he wouldn't admit), Magnus remembered what that conundrum was like. Simon was, at the same time, both too young and too old for either world.

"What do I do? How did you do this? How did you survive watching everyone you loved die?"

"I didn't. I was an orphan, remember? It was centuries before anyone ever loved me – even longer before I truly loved anyone else." He looked over into the next room, where Alec, his darling Alec, sat in the recliner. The TV was still on, replaying episodes of _Bewitched_. It had taken Alec years to fully appreciate classic TV, but the old shows' depictions of magic and Downworlders amused him even if he'd only admit it to Magnus.

Magnus remembered watching the _Underworld_ movies with him, and how he'd leaned forward in his seat the entire time, then afterward dissected the story, making a list of all the factual inaccuracies.

Now, Alec could barely remember which shows he'd seen and which ones he hadn't, which was why _Bewitched_, one of his favorites, was now on an almost constant loop. Magnus had grown so tired of the show with its laugh track that played after all of Samantha's mishaps and the ridiculous sound effects when she wiggled her nose; but he wouldn't turn it off, and if he were honest with himself, he'd probably keep playing it after Alec was gone just because he wouldn't know what else to do.

Still watching his partner, he said, "Alec will be eighty if he lives until his next birthday, and it frightens me to death, because I know one of these days, I'm going to wake up and he'll have left without me. My only consolation is that I've spent as much time with him as possible along the way. Can you say the same thing about Clary?"

He turned back to Simon, who was still standing there, his hands gripping the back of the chair in front of him so hard that Magnus feared he might break it. "The truth is, I don't know how to do this any better than you do." He gave a half-hearted smile. "It looks like we finally have something in common."


End file.
